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With the rise of big data, edge and cloud computing, data centers are under increasing pressure to be more cost-effective, high-performing, and sustainable. Mike Jackson, director of Data Center Offer Management, joins the show to talk about the evolution of data centers and the emerging trends impacting operations.

SEAN GRAHAM: Hello. I'm Sean Graham, a senior manager within the Brightlayer Data Center Suite team with another 10 in 10 podcast. With the rise of big data, edge, and cloud computing, data centers are under increasing pressure to be more cost-effective, high-performing, and sustainable.

Today we are talking with Mike Jackson, director of Data Center Offer Management, about the evolution of data centers and the emerging trends impacting operations. Mike, we have 10 questions and just 10 minutes. So, let's get started. How should data center operators think about global trends in data centers and digitalization?

MIKE JACKSON: Thanks for kicking it off. There's so much happening in the industry today. Digital transformation, and I'd call it a subset field, IoT or Internet of Things, is driving the creation of lots of trends, which are growing demand both in the traditional data center space, but also expanding the need and what Eaton chooses to call distributed IT -- or you'll hear it called edge computing.

It's important to categorize these trends into short, medium, and long-term, and for a couple of reasons. One, we want to make sure that we can solve the most immediate problems that's facing a data center organization, but at the same time, we want to have our eye on the future. So, the decisions that are made today don't adversely affect you in the future.

SEAN GRAHAM: What trend do you think is most prevalent right now?

MIKE JACKSON: The short answer is remote monitoring. According to Uptime Institute, 90% of all data center operators will increase the use of remote monitoring. The coronavirus is really a large catalyst for this trend. The stay-at-home orders were issued, and operators are trying to figure out how to keep their team safe, how do they comply with these government mandates, all while trying to keep their businesses running, especially those essential industries like health care, finance, education, even grocery providers. Organizations looked at remote monitoring to solve this problem. During this period, they really developed a competency around remote monitoring, and that skill set really allowed them to see the value. And as they moved it deeper into their organization, they started expanding its use into either new sets of infrastructure, expanded locations, or they start deploying new technologies like edge computing.

SEAN GRAHAM: You can't go anywhere in IT or the data center space without hearing about cloud. To what extent is this trend affecting traditional data centers?

MIKE JACKSON: Cloud computing is definitely helping to solve a problem in the industry. Most enterprises are seeing their demand for data center capacity rapidly increasing. But they aren't building new data centers, and this is really creating a capacity gap. And cloud computing is one of the means that's being used to close that gap. Other ones to be used are optimizing their own facilities or even looking at co-location. Data center operators need to be mindful of what they put in the cloud. Most of them surveyed will say they're still unwilling to put critical workloads in the public cloud. However, with that being said, operators are moving workloads. So now they need to be able to not only manage power space and cooling inside their own facilities, but they have to add portfolio management as a skill set that will help them to evaluate when and how to manage what they actually move to a public cloud. This includes factoring in things like time, cost, what additional requirements need to be met in order to manage their data center economics.

SEAN GRAHAM: Where do micro data centers, another emerging trend, fit into this equation? I've recently read that they're growing at about 20% a year.

MIKE JACKSON: They are another solution to the capacity problem. Micro data centers can be deployed extremely quickly. They could be delivered on site virtually complete and ready to spin up. So, they're a very quick way to add infrastructure. Again, this is helping data center operators look at how they bridge that gap of, they might not have the capacity they need today, and they're trying to evaluate solutions around moving things to the cloud or managing what they have inside their own data center infrastructure.

So again, this is another valuable potential solution for those operators trying to figure out how do they balance the economic equation between timeliness of delivering to what their demand is from their customer standpoint and balancing that with the different cost aspects.

SEAN GRAHAM: Speaking of trend, we've been hearing about edge for years. Would you still consider that a trend?

MIKE JACKSON: Absolutely. Edge or distributed IT has been around for a really long time in the IT world. But still, some 58% of companies are expected to really significantly increase their spend in edge computing. And what's interesting is these trends are all interconnected. Edge computing is one of the biggest drivers of remote monitoring. And this is really because those data center operators are now becoming responsible for these very geographically distributed locations. And these locations typically tend to have no full-time staff or potentially any IT resources at that site at all.

So, this is really creating that demand for remote monitoring, and having that capability to monitor what's going on and control what's happening in those remote sites.

SEAN GRAHAM: So, with all of this going on, what does this mean for cybersecurity?

MIKE JACKSON: IT and  data center data operators have always been aware of, and for the most part, successful around creating cyber secure environments. But as the world gets more complex, we have to be more vigilant. And this is really because traditionally it used to be one data center, maybe a few that operators had to be concerned about. But now, as edge increases and more compute points happen, the exposure increases exponentially. Additionally, non-traditional assets like power infrastructure and cooling infrastructure are now communicating across that same network. So you want to make sure that as you look at third-party providers such as public clouds and colos, they have practices and policies around cybersecurity. You want to look at the same thing for hardware providers and software providers, that they provide that same level of cybersecurity capability in their products, both digital products and software, and their hardware products that connect to your networks.

SEAN GRAHAM: Let’s take it outside of the traditional technology-- the technology realm for a second. The Great Resignation is a trend across industries. Is this trend impacting the data center space?

MIKE JACKSON: Absolutely. Half of data center operators are saying that they're having trouble finding qualified staff. And I would say, unfortunately, this is unlikely to be a short-term problem, and it really needs to be addressed.  So operators, besides building into their staff, they should really look at how do they consider automation technologies and making sure that there's tech that can answer these kinds of questions. What can you do to automate actions from reports or analytics? Where can resolutions to active issues be remediated without human intervention? Or how can we deploy machine learning or artificial intelligence to get more out of the existing infrastructure? That's something here my team at Eaton is really focused on continuing to develop, products that optimize and automate key parts of that data center operation.

SEAN GRAHAM: What are some of the applications of AI and machine learning in the data center?

MIKE JACKSON: Artificial intelligence and machine learning are some of the long-term trends that data center operators really need to be watching and truly do need to be planning on implementing. I think there's a significant amount of impact that can happen when we take those processes and we apply them inside the four walls of a data center. And really, the focus here is how do we take data out of a data center and do things either faster or smarter with little or no human intervention? Some practical examples of how this is applied. If you think about alerts in a data center, systems get a significant amount of alerts in alarms. And so being able to suppress errant alarms is interesting. But looking for trends around alarms that happen at the same time of day or using things like machine learning to understand what is normal for a subsystem, and then only acting when you see the data go outside of normal state. Instead of relying on thresholds that someone has set that are stagnant, you can use the data to tell you what's the right operating envelope for that device. And then the next step up would be start to use artificial intelligence to say not just when something goes wrong via an alarm, but show me how to fix it, or better yet, go out and fix it automatically without human intervention.

SEAN GRAHAM: Looking into the future, what's something that's not a trend today, but you expect to be one in the future?

MIKE JACKSON: With the investment in renewables and the growth in energy storage, I think data center as a grid is definitely a trend we're going to start to see. So large data centers combined with machine learning and A.I. will have the capability to turn the data center into a profit center by participating into a couple of different things, whether it's demand response or selling energy back to the grid.

And these are key applications for data centers that are traditionally seen as their infrastructure is a base cost to the business. So now these new technologies are emerging to help optimize what power source to be used, and then push that extra capacity back to the grid for a financial benefit to the company, but also there's an environmental benefit of mitigating a spike in demand that the grid would otherwise have to resolve via spinning up more output from a power plant.

SEAN GRAHAM: You mentioned renewables -- so to wrap it up, what can you tell us about sustainability in the data center?

MIKE JACKSON: I really think based on investments and acquisitions and valuations, companies and brands need to understand that they have to do more around sustainability. Some of the key things that we're seeing play out in the data center space, we absolutely need to move into and then beyond just reducing consumption and buying credits on the market to really moving to how do we use renewable resources and how do we actually manage source based on what natural resources are available.

Two other big pieces. One is, there's a lot of tech that is allowing us to not need it to be cooled as far-- so servers that could potentially operate at, say, 90 degrees instead of 70 degrees Fahrenheit or 32 degrees instead of 21 Celsius. Or it can even be operated outside or in less temperature-controlled environments.

And the other big piece is really optimizing inside their own walls. Cooling is a huge cost and drives significant environmental impact for data centers. So new technologies like immersion cooling or direct-to-chip cooling are gaining traction in the market, and they provide a pretty significant performance gains from a cooling perspective versus what we've seen with traditional air cooling.

And so it lets operators also get more out of the building envelope that they already have. So again, sustaining the need to use what they have to do more versus building another data center. All those factors are moving data centers to becoming more sustainable and really limiting their consumption of resources.

SEAN GRAHAM: Thanks for joining us today, Mike. This was great. If you'd like to learn more about optimizing your data center for the digital future, visit Eaton.com/Brightlayer.

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Mike Jackson

As part of Eaton's Digital Office, Mike Jackson and team are responsible for executing product management of data center software and digital services as well as the go-to-market strategies for Eaton in the data center segment. Mike joined Eaton in 2007, where he has held various roles in product leadership, marketing, sales and operations. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Dayton and a MBA from North Carolina State University.

Sean Graham

Before starting at Eaton, Sean worked 20 years in software and related services. His most recent roles include General Manager, Americas at FNT Software and a VP of Business Development and Alliances at CA Technologies. Sean now consults partners on how to grow their business through helping their customers successfully execute digital transformations. 
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Digital transformation is driving the creation of lots of trends. It's important to categorize these trends into short, medium, and long-term so we can solve the most immediate problems that's facing a data center organization, but at the same time, make decisions that don't adversely affect you in the future. 

Mike Jackson, director of Data Center Offer Management, Eaton

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